I’m Officially a WordPress Plugin Developer

Tech

UPDATE: I have stopped development on this plugin due to the fact that the Twitter Poker Tour league disbanded some time ago. I am posting the module here to be downloaded and used.

Standard Disclaimer:
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Download the WP-PokerLeague Plugin

Continue reading I’m Officially a WordPress Plugin Developer →

Make a Difference in Someone’s Life this Christmas

Misc

I’ve long toyed with this idea. I am sure it’s nothing new and people probably do it all the time, but for anyone looking to buy me Christmas or birthday presents, I would like them instead to make a small donation to my favorite charities. I’m an impulse shopper and at times spend foolishly so if there is something I *really* want, I’ll buy it for myself. Continue reading Make a Difference in Someone’s Life this Christmas →

Twitter: Hashtag Etiquette

twitter

Nearly every Tuesday or Thursday, and sometimes randomly, someone tries to start a new Twitter meme by using the #tpt hashtag for a variety of things: Third Person [Tue/Thu], TwitPic [Tue/Thu], and others. The Twitter Poker Tour has been using the #tpt hashtag for over a year and it is counter productive to both the TPT and the new meme to share a hashtag as it causes confusion. Continue reading Twitter: Hashtag Etiquette →

Jimmy Fund Radio Telethon

Misc, ,

The telethon is now over and the Jimmy Fund raises over 4 million dollars in the past two days. The proceeds from this will go to fund cancer research and to help make the lives of children and families dealing with cancer have a sense of hope.

My friend emailed this to all of us yesterday during the final drive of the charity telethon where the Jimmy Fund was trying to reach it’s goal of 5 million in these tough economic time. I hope you can find time and a little money to still donate. Continue reading Jimmy Fund Radio Telethon →

Corporate Blogging

Marketing, , , ,

In my day job I work for an online home furnishings retailer OrientalFurniture.com. We are in the process of upgrading our ecommerce platform and redesigning the site to provide new functionality and an updated look and feel.

We are currently rebranding and carrying out our new marketing efforts and one key aspect is our new Interior Design blog. This new blog will focus on Asian Style with categories for Buying Guides, Style Tips and Cultural Spotlights.

This blog will be a lot different to manage than my personal blogs as it will be the blogging persona of our company. Also it is a blog in a traditional industry. Hopefully the niche interior design angle will let it standout and allow us to create unique content.

Stay tuned 😉

TweetSuite Errors and Troubleshooting

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I ran into more issues getting this to work properly so I switched to another TweetBack plugin. I like the TweetSuite implementation better so I will try to get it working on another one of my blogs (this one perhaps!). Thanks for reading!

I was having a lot of trouble getting TweetSuite to work properly on the Tweet Vegas website. After some tweaking and researching I finally got it to work. Here is a list of issues/pointers to keep in mind while integrating it.

  1. “Tweet This” button will only appear on posts published after the plugin was installed. There is a table called WP_ShortURLS which is populated with the different iterations of the short urls for the post (bit.ly, tinyurl, etc). The records are inserted upon the publishing of the post. Therefore previous posts will not be available in this table. You can unpublish then republish your post to see it work.
  2. You need to set the permissions on the TweetSuite plugin folder to 777 or else the dynamic “Tweet This” image cannot be created.
  3. I had an issue where the “Tweet This” image wouldn’t show up when there were zero tweetbacks. I added this line to rt-gif.php
    4. if($count<1) { $count="0"; }

    I added it directly after line 4. Your results may vary, this was an issue I came across. There is likely a more elegant solution, but it worked for me!

  4. If you do not set your twitter handle in the TweetSuite settings, but leave the default “admin” then your tweetback will default to appending “from @admin” at the end. You can see this in action here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from+%40admin

Hopefully this will come in handy as you install TweetSuite.

URL Encode a Twitter Status Message

twitter, ,

Updated 5/23/2013: Thanks @Jason Coleman:

For anyone wondering, the /home/?status= URLs don’t work anymore. You need to use the “intent” URLs. e.g.

http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=This+is+a+tweet.

You may have seen Twitter contests where to enter you need to “Click Here to Retweet” a certain message. Here is how it is done!

You can add a custom message to the Twitter URL as a link like so:

http://twitter.com/home?status=Custom%20Message%20Here

When you click it, you will be brought to your Twitter home page (if you are logged on already) and the status box will now say “Custom Message Here”. Obviously you can put in whatever text you wish to be displayed.

What do you do if you want to put spaces, hashtags, slashes and other special characters in your message? You can use an URL Encoder like this to do the work for you.

When you encode the URL, be sure to append it to http://twitter.com/home?status=

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Donate to a Good Cause this Holiday

Misc, , , ,

I just made a donation to the Fisher House to support the great work they are doing. The Fisher House provides a home away from home for the families of America’s soldiers who often have to travel long distances to receive specialized medical care.

This is a great cause and your help is needed this holiday season to make sure the families of our wounded soldiers can be close to a loved one at these most stressful times.

Thank you, and Happy Holidays!

Geoff Manning’s Top 5 Movies of All Time!!!1

Misc

To be considered in my top X “All Time” movies it has to pass one test. Will I stop what I am doing and watch it, whenever it is on, no matter what I am doing? With that as the criteria, here are my top 5 movies of all time:

  1. Shawshank Redemption
  2. Tombstone
  3. Cincinnati Kid
  4. Old School
  5. Armageddon (don’t laugh! I think it kicks ass).

I’d like to see what my other friends choose as their top movies, so consider yourself tagged:

  1. Pokerplasm
  2. Grundy
  3. Rock_The_Ice